Bedtime consistency is key for women trying to maintain their weight, according to new BYU research. It found that women who vary either bedtime or rising time tend to have higher body fat than those who go to bed and get up around the same time.

PROVO — People who go to bed and wake up at vastly different times or short themselves on sleep have less-than-dreamy results when it comes to controlling body fat, according to new research from BYU.

High-quality, consistent sleep influences the ability to maintain a healthy body weight, researchers found in results published online in the American Journal of Health Promotion. The Brigham Young University researchers said that women who change the time they get up or go to bed by more than 90 minutes during the week are more prone to body fat than those who are more consistent in their sleep.

"An interesting findings was that the pattern of sleep matters — when you go to sleep and when you get up," said Bruce Bailey, the exercise science professor who led the study of more than 300 women attending two big universities in the West.

Getting up at about the same time every morning is particularly related to lower body fat and lower Body Mass Index, but going to bed the same time matters as well. The effect was stronger on body fat than on BMI, he said.

Enough sleep

The best sleep-duration range was between 6.5 and 8.5 hours a night, and Bailey said 8 to 8.5 hours a night was the "sweet spot" — but the consistency and quality of the sleep was even more important. "We all have an internal circadian clock and if you don't go to sleep at a consistent time, you mess with that internal clock. It has an impact on different physiological aspects, like hormones related to satiety and activity patterns," he said.

Bailey said women in the study who got more than 8.5 hours of sleep had really high body fat and it's possible something else was going on with them that affected their weight and how much sleep they got. Those who slept fewer than 6.5 hours also had more body fat than those who fell into that desirable mid-range of sleep.

"It's not just how much sleep, but the quality of the sleep, and several factors can be used to determine that," said Larry Tucker, an exercise science professor and co-author of the study.

The researchers used tools to make sure their assessments were accurate. The participants, 330 women ages 17 to 26, had their body composition measured and were asked to fill out a sleep log. They wore an activity monitor — an accelerometer that is "extraordinarily precise," said Tucker — for a week, both day and night. It let researchers objectively determine the quality and duration of their sleep. The better the quality of the sleep, the healthier the weight, they found.

"Some people sleep like a log and don't move, they sleep very peacefully, and others are not really sleeping, constantly tossing and turning and waking up," said Tucker. The device also told the researchers when the individual went to bed, although they recorded the time on their log, as well.

The participants' age range, 17 to 26, was selected because "young adults tend to have more unusual sleep patterns than others," said Tucker. "By the time we're older, we learn the value of sleep and usually adapt so we can get enough. At this age, they still have the strength of youth and may feel like they can skip some sleep."

Women were excluded from the study if they were not able to engage in moderately intense activity, were dieting to lose weight, were pregnant or nursing or had a known metabolic disease. Certain medications also excluded them.

Bailey said there's no reason to think the findings on sleep and weight would be different with men or older age groups. "There are a number of other studies that show sleep is related to body weight," he said. "There's enough evidence that's similar."

Popular Comments

The study's findings do not support the headline. They did a multivariate
regression to show a relationship between sleep and body fat, but they
didn't study the causality between the two. This is a classic case of the
(oft overused)
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12:39 p.m. Nov. 15, 2013

Top comment

Aguia

Logan, UT

It is my understanding of statistics that that related, linked, and correlation
are more or less synonyms. All refer to the fact that some relationship exists
between two factors without implying the direction of the relationship. As the
headline
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Lois M. Collins is a reporter and columnist for the Deseret News. While she writes primarily on health and family issues for the national and news sections, she also writes a biweekly column and her work appears often in more ..